


Family

by Ghrelt



Series: The Old Guard AUs [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anger, Angst, Booker/Therapy, F/F, Fix-It, Forgiveness, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, Rescuing Quynh, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25618660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghrelt/pseuds/Ghrelt
Summary: “I failed him once.  Fucking spectacularly, for two hundred years.  I’ll be damned if I do it again.”  The pain of hundreds of years of failing another shines out of Andy's blue-green eyes.  “I can’t lose another one.  Not one we could save.  Booker can’t come back from this.  Not on his own.  Not without…”His family.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: The Old Guard AUs [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1884016
Comments: 328
Kudos: 998





	1. No Man Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> This is Canon-Divergent in that they track down Booker shortly after the end of the movie, and they rescue Quynh themselves.
> 
> I want the immortal family happy, even if I have to make it happen. Here's my attempt.

“I failed him once. Fucking spectacularly, for two hundred years. I’ll be damned if I do it again.” The pain of hundreds of years of failing another shines out of Andy's blue-green eyes. “I can’t lose another one. Not one we could save. Booker can’t come back from this. Not on his own. Not without…”

His family.

The words hang unsaid between them.

“No man left behind,” Nile says, moving to stand next to her. Not quite touching. More like covering her flank. And facing the two men.

It burns. The heat of the _betrayal_. That that traitor tried to sacrifice them, for his own petty need to end it all.

To trade their happiness, and for what?

He handed them over to be dissected, without so much as a, ‘This is killing me, and I wish it would end.’

Is it so fucking hard to open your mouth and ask for help.

So fucking hard you’d rather trade everything you stand for, everyone you stand _with_ , rather than utter those words.

Rather than being honest with the people who love you.

Nicky moves closer to Joe, arms touching. By his side, as always. He reaches down, lacing their fingers together.

It is not a request. Or attempt at coercion. It is a wordless show of support. A willingness to hand this decision entirely over to Joe. And a promise to never resent him for it.

A millennia with someone will do that. Allow you to hold an entire conversation with a gesture.

Booker made his choice. He made the choice for all of them. What do they owe him, after that?

In the end, it is not what they owe him for after, but before.

And what they owe Andy. She doesn’t have millennia. No longer.

In the end, forgiveness says more about the one giving it, than the one receiving it.

…

“You can wallow in this for the next hundred years, or you can fucking atone. The choice is yours.”

The words are said over a scarred table in a run-down little apartment. Across a pile of bottles and discarded cigarette butts. In a room that reeks of sweat, and stale smoke, and regret.

Across from a bleary-eyed man who needed to shave sometime last week and probably should have bathed even before that.

He blinks at the mirage glaring daggers at him, wondering if he’s finally drank himself beyond sanity.

The bubbles in the back of his brain tell him it wasn’t the drink, and it happened a long time ago.

He wants to throw a bottle at her head. He wants to push the table out of the way and pull her into his arms and hug her so hard she pops a rib, and never let go.

He wants to curl up on the floor and be done with it all.

“What do you want from me?” he asks, bone weary. He sees it in her too, though it’s different now. He wonders if there’s something in his new sister that he never had. Could never have aspired to.

Part of him wants to hate Nile for that. Hate Andy for being drawn to her like skin to the sun in the bitter winter’s cold.

But Nile is impossible to hate. Part of him feels drawn to her in the same way.

And then he hates himself for wanting that hope.

“First thing?” she says, grabbing the nearest half-empty bottle and marching over to the sink. “This goes.” Andy dumps it, amber glugging down past the dirty dishes, crusted with days old food. “All of it. And no more. For you, for any of us. You’ve hidden behind it for long enough.”

She’s no better, and well she knows it.

“You’re not giving me a lot of incentive to go with you.” Booker says with a smirk.

She wants to throw more than a bottle at his head. “Fine. See you in a hundred years. Bring flowers.”

For her grave.

Andy won’t give him the satisfaction of her tears. She drops the bottle, crashing loudly against the dishes before spinning around, wondering why the fuck she bothered. Marches straight for the door without looking back.

She’s gone by the time he makes it to the hallway.

Nile isn’t. She looks him up and down, wrinkling her nose. “You look like shit. Coming, or not?”

He swallows something dry and aching. Nods. “Yeah. I’m coming.”

…

Booker doesn’t take much with him. He hasn’t had much. A few changes of clothes. Couple weapons. Some documents. A laptop and a phone. It takes him all of four minutes to pack, leaving some money on the table to pay for the mess. Slings the bag of his meager belongings across his chest and follows Nile out.

Andy’s fuming behind the wheel of the car. 

“Get in, shut up, and don’t give her a reason to shoot you and wreck the upholstery,” Nile hisses as they approach. She takes the front seat, leaving him to slink into the back.

Nicky and Joe aren’t there. He wants to ask. But doesn’t.

Maybe they gave up on him. He doesn’t really understand why these two haven’t.

Andy leaves rubber on the street as she squeals away, taking out all her frustration on the gas pedal.

They drive for a long time. It feels like days before they stop at a motel that’s almost as run-down as his apartment.

Booker is told in no uncertain terms to take a goddamn shower and the clothes he was wearing when he left the dingy apartment go suspiciously missing while he’s in the shower, miraculously replaced by a stack of clean ones.

A stubborn part of him wants to come out of the bathroom naked, but as he likes his bits where they are, he doesn’t tempt fate.

Fate, in this case, has blue eyes, a nasty temper, and an axe.

Perhaps doom is a more appropriate word.

Nile’s lounging on one of the beds when he comes out, fully dressed and with a fresh-trimmed beard. “You look almost human,” she says.

“Thanks,” he says distractedly, casting about for a drink.

“Don’t even fucking think about it. You and I have relied on shit coping mechanisms for far too long and now we’re going to do better,” Andy says, planted in a chair that’s wedged against the inside of the door.

The implication is strong: if he wants to get a drink, he has to go through her. 

_Merde._

She looks like she plans on sleeping there, and there’s something about the way her hands sit against her thighs that tells him she’s raring for a fight.

Who’s he kidding? She’s breathing, isn’t she? Of course she’s raring for a fight.

Booker flops on the empty bed, staring up at the ceiling. Intending to stay up all night. He hasn’t fallen asleep without drinking himself to that point in many, many years. He’s not even sure he can.

Four and a half minutes later, he’s snoring softly, head lolling onto his shoulder.

Nile snaps a picture.

Andy quirks a brow at her before slumping deep in the chair with her legs out in front of her. Crossing her arms over her chest and closing her eyes.

Nile reads on her phone a while longer before turning the lamp off and slipping under the covers.

These people are so far beyond weird.

But they’re weirdly hers. Even now. Already. She snuggles down into the blankets and lets herself fall asleep. They have a long drive tomorrow.

…

Booker wakes choking. Clawing at a prison that’s as familiar as his own reflection. More. He knows every wretched curve of that metal coffin. He knows how the iron feels like ice against his fingers. How the salt stings his lungs. His eyes. He knows the darkness beyond the holes they left in the face. So he could see.

No. So _she_ could see. He’s never been in the iron maiden. Never drowned. Not once in his two hundred years. And yet. He’s drowned every night. Or every night he hasn’t drunk himself to sleep.

Nile knows it. She feels the panic. The struggle. The confusion. The _anger._ The sheer crashing anger that she’s trapped down here and abandoned. Forgotten. Yet still she dies. Drowns. Endlessly. Hell is supposed to be fire. Not water. She stands, walking into the bathroom to splash water on her face. Fuck. He’s had two hundred years of this. It’s no wonder he drinks. 

He’s quiet by the time she returns, staring up at the ceiling.

Andy stands, carrying her pistol over and laying on the bed next to him. Blinking up at nothing.

“I’m sorry I did this to you,” she sighs.

“You mean deprive me of the drink?” he quips.

“Pretty much everything _but_ that.” He can hear her smile in the words.

…

The day after the day after that they pull up to a little cottage nestled in a quiet little village that looks much the same as a thousand others. 

An old stone fence surrounds the garden, and Andy drives around back to park the car. “Home, sweet home.”

They all slide out, grab their gear, and head in.

It’s old. Made of the same stone as the fence. With a tiled roof and worn wooden floors. Homey. It’s been added onto a time or two and a second level that is not original to the house stretches up on the other side of the kitchen, staircase leading up.

They aren’t here. Booker sees it instantly. Yusuf and Nicolo leave a certain… impression wherever they are. Books left upside-down and splayed open. Spilled flour on the countertop from Joe trying to distract Nicky while he’s trying to cook. Odd spices, the ones Nicky collects in his travels and brings with him whenever he can.

It is as he expected, but less than he hoped.

He remembers the words Joe shouted at him in the lab. The look. Sebastien knows as well as his next breath, that Joe voted he remain in exile. Permanently. Just as he knows Nile was willing to allow him to return with a simple apology.

Andy likely suggested physical torment. A very Andy solution. Quick catharsis, and move on.

Nicky’s punishment would be the most difficult of all of them: to live. To live, and _mean it._ Booker’s not sure he’s even capable of that.

But their absence sits like a lodestone in his gut.

He broke them.

They’d been a unit. A single core group. Not always getting along, or agreeing. But always one, no matter how far apart.

His bitterness broke them.

Booker stares at Andy’s back, wondering how she tolerates him after everything he’s done.

Two conclusions crash down on his head at once: that with Andy being mortal, they wouldn’t leave her. They would never risk her safety. Not even for him. And that if he’d truly split them so wholly, she would _not_ have forgiven him.

So. Joe and Nicky are nearby. And have been since Andy and Nile came for him.

But of course they are. Booker shakes his head. He was an idiot to think otherwise.

…

The first few days all Booker feels is the clawing need for a drink. The habit is so ingrained his hands itch without it. And then they shake. Why would they do that. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wonders if that’s withdrawal or some psychosomatic bullshit.

_It’s all in your head._

But how the fuck does that make it any less real?

…

Andy has her own demons to wrangle. All of this is her fault. Losing Quynh. _Not finding her for five hundred years._

By the time Booker came along, she was already tired. Worn down.

Nicky and Joe had each other. All Book had was Andy. 

That’s why she doesn’t blame him. Or not much. 

She’d blame him a fuckofalot more if he’d done serious damage. If he’d lost any of them.

She blames herself.

Andromache is the oldest. Not a mother.

Fuck, no.

Not that. Never that.

But mentor. Big sister, maybe?

Matriarch.

Family.

Booker saw Joe and Nicky, so wrapped up in one another. This shining beacon of what a relationship could be. Should be. 

And he could never have that.

He’d had a wife. Kids. He watched them die, and to a one, they spit vitriol and fire at him before the end. 

He’d had love. Family. And what did he get to replace that?

Them. Her.

Fuck.

A woman so wracked with guilt she never really let him in, for fear she’d let him down.

In the end, that was _how_ she let him down.

And now, in order to make up for that, to make it right. 

If it was even still possible. 

She had to hurt the others she loved so much.

The rest of her family.

Selfishly, she needs to try to repair the damage she’s done to Sebastien, while she’s still here.

He deserves those hundred years away.

For trying to trade Joe and Nicky’s happiness for an end to his suffering.

But she can’t live with knowing she failed him, and then walk away.

And if she’s to fade and he is not, she has to leave him with purpose. There has to be a reason for his existence. For why he was granted the blessing and the curse.

For why his immortality remains.

If it’s the last thing she does, she has to help him find it.

Even though she knows full well this may _be_ the last thing she does. Ever.

…

In the quieter times, Nicky has always been the peacemaker.

The go-between. The one willing to be reasonable and consider all sides.

The one to pull them all together with a meal they’re willing to tolerate each other’s presence for. More often than not, by the time forks hit empty plates and hands pat full bellies, they’re all smiling and whatever problem they had before doesn’t seem so large.

In the heat of battle? Not so much. While Nicky isn’t a hothead, per se (that distinction goes to Joe, in the moment), he does have a tendency to _completely and utterly lose his shit_ if Joe’s in danger.

But in between battles, he’s the peacemaker.

This is new territory for him.

Booker. What he did to them. What he tried to do for Andy and what he did to her, too.

Nicky’s feelings are fucking complicated about that.

He feels the burden of guilt. That he was so lost in Joe that he didn’t notice how Sebastien was hurting.

That he became so desperate he’d choose to betray his family, just for the chance at an end.

And then there’s the fact that he just plain misses him. The strange combinations of groceries he’d bring home as a challenge for Nicky, their resident chef. The bets. Booker always knew where the good book shops were. He misses all that and more.

Their family is not big, and by necessity remains that way. Losing Booker is like losing a limb. One that takes a long, long time to reattach. And aches the whole time.

And then, there is Joe.

The pain Joe feels for the betrayal is searing. Nearly all-consuming. And Nicky needs to be the one to hold space for that.

Joe carries it for all of them.

Andy’s too tired to carry that along with everything else.

Nile’s too new to understand the enormity of what he did.

Nicky simply doesn’t want to. It sounds exhausting and now that they know why, he thinks they can trust Booker not to do it again. He’s seen the regret. How devastated Booker was that Andy nearly ended by his hand.

He doesn’t blame Joe for how he feels. Nicky feels a little of that anger, himself. Not enough to hang onto though. There is no space for anger in his heart around the shape that is Joe.

And so, Nicky’s caught between the ones willing to forgive, and the ones not. 

Over the next few weeks or months, he’ll have to walk a fine line between them, while never sacrificing Joes needs in the process.

Never.

If the choice is between Booker and Joe, it’s not even a choice.

Perhaps that’s a part of the problem that led to all this in the first place. Even so, he refuses to feel guilty for it.

…

Joe is livid.

For what that bastard did.

For what he tried to do.

For waking in a van surrounded by imbeciles who hurt Nicky without a second’s thought.

For being stabbed over and over by a sadistic prick who thought his money entitled him to whatever he could take. 

For being treated like an animal.

For the pain Nicky felt under the hands of those scientists.

For the bullets they all took for Andy.

For the bullet Booker put in her himself.

That one hits a little harder than the others.

Hits harder than all but when the head of that pharma brat’s security force _blew Nicky’s brains out._

For Nile having to die to get them out. And then die again to take Merrick out.

His anger is a living thing, slithering molten through his guts that makes him want to snap Booker’s neck. And _keep it snapped._

Booker’s not one of them anymore. He can die and get up hundreds of thousands of times and that won’t make him one of them. He lost that right when he handed them over _without bothering to ask._

Joe has no intention of ever forgiving the bastard.

Booker doesn’t deserve it.


	2. Calm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the quiet of the cottage, the immortals are left with only their emotions... and each other.

Everything about this is so new to Nile. She stormed into Merrick labs and got them out. The only people who stood a chance of understanding her. Who barely knew her but wanted to protect her. Keep her safe.

Turns out they were crap at that last part, but points for intent?

They gave her the choice, even knowing she could expose them.

That: the choice. Means more than anything else.

She refused to leave him behind. He’s one of them. He doesn’t deserve to be treated like a rat and tortured and imprisoned any more than the others, even if it was technically his idea.

Nile came to get them out. _All_ of them.

So if Andy wants to go back for him, she’s all-in. Guy needs a damn keeper anyways.

Not that she’s volunteering for that, so much as the opportunity to kick his ass if and when he should need it.

He will definitely need it.

…

Gods-that-don’t-exist, Andy needs a goddamn drink.

The day rasps like sand paper inside her skin and her every nerve ending feels raw and burning. It is one of those Bad Guilt days.

Booker drinks to hold the dreams at bay.

Andy does the same for the guilt. For the grief of her lost love. Lost loves, really.

For the first soldier who was ready when he went, but she wasn’t. For the one she lost to pain and torment and has still not recovered.

For the one she allowed herself to love. Who gave her his lifetime and he grew old in her arms before making her go.

He was not like Booker’s family. He knew something of her gift-slash-curse and chose to embrace it for his lifetime. To love her as she is, without envy. And yes, a century after he made her go, even in his old age not wanting her to risk herself in order to stay to the end. Even after that, she misses him. His voice. His arms. His conviction.

Here she stands, with nothing left to numb the pain.

She snaps at them, cruel little jabs that cut deep. Nile rolls her eyes and disappears across the lane and into the house that’s almost obscured by massive old trees. To the men who haven’t come, yet stay close enough to protect.

Joe and Nicky are better company on days like today, and she leaves the two bitter alcoholics to their own devices.

Booker cringes one too many times after she lands a particularly direct verbal hit, and she storms out into the back garden. Needing to just… get away.

She hasn’t been back here since they arrived, and someone’s been busy.

There’s a series of practice dummies set up in a half-circle. A hanging heavy bag. Training swords. Bows and arrows. 

Nicky.

They haven’t seen him since they arrived, and she understands completely. Joe needs him more than the rest do right now. But it’s good to know he’s close.

And still taking care of them. She even smiles a bit before she kicks the shit out of herself and that heavy bag for three hours straight.

Fuck, but is she sore after. Keeps forgetting she can’t heal. Has to wrap bleeding knuckles after splitting them open, leaving red streaks on the grey bag that hangs in the open, unused horse shelter along one side of the yard.

Then soaks in a bath full of salts, still wishing for that drink.

This was supposed to help Booker. She didn’t intend his healing to be her self-flagellation. She should have known better.

…

Booker is faring no better, and, without the benefit of self-medicating, wakes gasping, choking. Clawing at his own throat as he tries to expel water that simply isn’t there. 

Every. Single. Night.

He shambles bleary-eyed through the house by day, stares at the ceiling after dark. Haunting the place.

“He can’t go on like this,” Nile says over the breakfast table one morning after Book woke three separate times and none of them got any sleep worth mentioning. 

Book’s in the hammock in the backyard, dozing with a hat over his face. The sunlight helps separate his reality from the dreams, he’s discovered. His skin helps his mind to differentiate.

“I know,” Andy says, dragging a hand over a face that’s aged ten years in the week since they arrived. “But I can’t let him go back to the bottle. He’s been drowning in it as long as I’ve known him.”

Nile nods. “Yeah but alcohol’s shit medicine. Anyone ever considered getting him sleeping pills?”

Andy pushes her half-eaten plate of eggs away, scraping across the wooden table. “I. Don’t even know what those are.”

These people are going to be the death of Nile. Again. Or permanently. Or maybe they’re her purgatory? 

So many modern conveniences, and her fellow immortals don’t even know about them. “They’re a thing. I take them sometimes when the nightmares get bad.”

“Do you have any here?” Andy says, sitting up. Suddenly entirely alert despite the lack of sleep.

“Yes, but we aren’t giving him any unless he knows what they are and the side-effects. Drugging him isn’t going to make him better.”

Andy huffs a breath through her nose. Drugging him would be _so much easier_. But so would letting him drink. They’re not here for easy. They’re here for fixing two hundred years of broken, shit coping mechanisms. 

_Immortality is a fucking pain in the ass and people should stop wanting it_ , Andy thinks viciously.

But Nile’s right. 

“Yeah. We give him the option when he comes in. He gets them from you. No other source. Then we can monitor how much he’s using, and when.”

Acceptable terms. Nile nods.

“Do you have a way of getting more?”

“There’s a few different over-the-counter ones. If those don’t work, we’ll need to find a doctor.”

“Could you look into that?” Andy asks. She doesn’t know how.

“Yeah. I got this one, boss.” She’s picking up the habit the others have of calling her that.

Booker’s pretty much willing to try anything at this point. He hates the idea the drugs might muddle him up if they come under attack, but is the alcohol really any better? He’s not exactly sharp with the lack of sleep.

He opts for it simply for a change of scenery.

The first two they try don’t work, but the third? He actually gets a few hours of dreamless sleep.

It’s such a relief, that he actually smiles the next day. _Smiles_. A genuine, soft thing. The first sign of anything from him but crushing despair and guilt since they arrived.

The three of them sit by the fire at night, reading or telling stories. Firelight dancing on their skin as they talk. As hope seeps back into Andy by degrees and Booker tries to relight a spark in himself that’s long since suffocated.

It takes him a few weeks to realise he’s been drowning himself by day as surely as he feels _her_ drown by night. 

That he’s ignored the others bobbing in the surf around him.

He chose to pull them under rather than asking them to buoy him up.

That is not something he can just apologise for. Take back.

He considers crossing the lane and pushing the gate open. Walking around to the front door and knocking, hat in his hand.

Thinks better of it, considering Joe.

The man needs time, not a half-choked out apology he wouldn’t accept anyways.

And one night Booker smells his favourite meal wafting across the lane.

That. Is beyond cruel. 

He knows it’s Joe’s doing. Has to be. Nicky’s not the petty type.

But Nicky’s the one who does the cooking. He always has. That tells him something too.

Nicolo’s a master at combining the flavors of the beef, and the onions, and the bacon, and the burgundy. 

Hell, Booker could do with just the burgundy. But the rest. Tender meat. Soft vegetables. Gravy so good you could eat it like soup. 

And the company, of course. Both of them.

You don’t get Nicky without Joe without Nicky without…

You don’t. They are two halves of a whole. 

He misses both of them. The weight of Nicky’s considering gaze, and his forgiveness. Joe’s quick smile and sharp wit.

He even misses Joe’s anger. The blazing thing Sebastien lit and fanned and threw so much fuel on he can’t see or reach him past the bonfire.

His own fault.

Nile’s forgiveness is a light, fluttery thing. It is simple, because she was barely wronged.

Andy’s is strange, festering. Complicated and deep and inextricably bound with her guilt and her bone-deep exhaustion from existing so long on this earth.

Joe’s is non-existent, and Booker takes full responsibility for that. Most days he thinks Joe’s the only reasonable one of them all. The only one whose feelings towards him actually make sense.

Nicky’s forgiveness is heavy. It bears the weight of everything Booker did. Everything he deserves. Penance and punishment and atonement. Nicky will not forget. But yet. He forgives. Wholly and with full knowledge of culpability. He hurts, for himself and Joe. And yet. He forgives.

Booker knows this as well as he knows the aching vacancy of his empty hand.

Andy sends Nile across the street with a knowing smile. “Go,” she says. “Tell them if they don’t save enough for me I’ll find a violin.”

She doesn’t have to be told twice. Her mouth was already watering.

Nicky opens the door slowly, and a broad smile spreads across his face as he sees who it is. “Come! Eat!” he says, pulling the door open wide for her to pass.

Joe’s scowl turns to a grin as he spies his new sister. “We missed you,” he says from the kitchen. They very much did.

Nicky cranes his neck to look past her, ensuring no one else is coming before closing the door.

“Andy says save some for her or she’s getting a violin?” Nile looks entirely confused by the message.

Joe turns pale and Nicky’s eyes go wide. They both mutter at themselves in their own language for a moment before Nicky nods. “Yes. There is plenty enough.”

“There are few things created on this earth that are as painful as Andromache of Scythia with her hands on a violin,” Joe says with a shudder. “Pray you never learn.”

“Sit,” he says, waving her in as Nicky quickly sets another place at the table. “I tire of Nicky’s company,” he says with a wink in the man’s direction. “Regale me with a story?”

“Of what? The House that Guilt Built? Things are downright Catholic over there.”

Both men burst out laughing before the smile falls from Joe’s lips. “No. That sounds even more boring than Nicky. Surely you have some interesting tale of impetuous youth? I scarce remember mine.”

“That’s because you’re old,” Nile fires back with a cheeky grin as Joe clutches his chest, obviously mortally wounded. “Well there was that one time I got a kitten without asking my mom and hid it in my room for three days before she found out.”

Nicky pulls the cork on a bottle and begins to fill her glass. 

Nile looks back and forth from it to the two men. “Um. We’re not drinking.”

“Those rules do not apply here,” Nicky says. “If Sebastien wants to share he has but to come ask.”

“And then get the door slammed in his face,” adds Joe. Which, as far as he’s concerned, is the most polite response the traitor can expect.

“See? Rules don’t apply here,” Nicky continues mildly.

She shrugs and let him pour. “Might want to hide it when Andy gets here. Since she’s cut Booker off she’s not drinking either.”

Both men go still, then slowly turn to stare at her.

“Andromache. Is sober. On purpose?” Joe says incredulously. “By _choice?_ ”

“She said if she’s serious about Booker sobering up she needs to as well. So please support her in that?”

Nicky finishes dishing up for the other two, bringing their bowls to the table. Then turns to stow any visible liquor in a cabinet. 

“Thanks.”

“It is a simple enough thing to do,” Nicky assures her as he brings his own bowl to the table and sits across from Joe.

The meal is delicious and Nile knows why Booker was drooling in this direction earlier.

“You should come over more often,” says Joe between bites. “You may wish to knock first though,” he adds with a sly grin.

Nile has a moment of utter clarity, staring backwards down nine hundred years. Watching Andy walk in on them in various states of… <ahem>

…dozens of times.

Nicky bites back a smile of his own, burying it under a mouthful of food. As though he can read her thoughts.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she finally says after she remembers to swallow.

They hear the story about the kitten, which she got to keep after a long lecture about honesty and animal care. And freaking her mom right the hell out. The poor woman had thought they had rats.

She doesn’t linger after she’s done eating, wanting Andy to get some time with the men while the food is still warm.

It only takes Andy a couple of minutes to appear after Nile goes, barging in through the front door like she owns the place.

Even so, there is no sign they were drinking. Ever. The bottle and the glasses are missing from the table entirely.

Andy knows them well enough to note the absence, quirking a brow. “She told you.”

“She did,” says Nicky. “The least we can do to support you is not drink in your presence.”

Andy heaves a sigh. Opens her mouth. Closes it. Flops into the seat Nile vacated. “Thank you,” she finally says. “Sobriety sucks.”

Nicky glances at Joe as he brings her a bowl. “How are… others. Taking it.”

She laughs and takes a bite, humming obscenely before she answers. “Slightly worse than I am. Not sleeping well. Did you know they make pills for that? To help you sleep?”

Joe and Nicky have never needed anything of the sort. They wear each other out if they’re restless. Hold each other through nightmares. And the warm, solid contact of the other is, more often than not, enough to ensure a good night’s rest.

All things they’re quite aware Booker doesn’t have.

They let the question lie, all knowing the answer.

“Well the pills seem to be helping.”

She doesn’t mention the smile. Joe doesn’t want to hear it and she doesn’t need to needle him about it. “This is delicious,” she says to Nicky. “An excellent choice.” She levels that one at Joe, knowing full well making Booker’s favourite meal and not inviting him to eat it is out of pure spite.

“Thank you,” Joe says smugly from his position at the sink where he’s washing the dishes by hand. Just because the idea had tainted origins, doesn’t mean it lacked merit.

Nicky steps in behind him, pressing his lips to Joe’s neck. He hums a little and they sway together to the tune.

That’s a relief. Andy knows being here, close to Booker is a strain on Joe. He’s still very, very angry. And welcome to it. She doesn’t blame him. She’s just glad it doesn’t seem to have aversely affected the two men’s relationship.

“I should get back,” Andy says, slowly rising to her feet. “Thanks for the practice space. I needed that.”

Nicky turns to meet her gaze and simply nods. Just a acknowledgement of her gratitude. “You are always welcome in our home. As you well know.”

She flashes a bright smile. “I’ll try to knock.”

“Or you’ll get a view you’ve seen plenty,” Joe tosses over his shoulder. “Don’t be a stranger.”

She goes back, joining Nile and Booker in their spot by the fireplace.

Booker opens his mouth as he looks back at her. Closes it.

She pats his shoulder. They’ll come around. Eventually.

Easy money puts Joe finally speaking to him again in about two hundred years. Maybe forgiving him in five.

“How was it?” he asks. 

“Excellent, as always.” She doesn’t mince the words. 

“I hate you,” he sighs.

“No you don’t,” she says, kissing his temple.

No. He really doesn’t.

…

Who knows how long they could have continued on like that, but life has a way of shaking things up.

This time, it shook hard.

It started with a simple email from Copley: _I may have found something. Call me._

He’s made it his life’s work for the last two years, to track down any evidence of them, no matter how obscure or how far back it goes.

Andy calls. “What do you have?”

There’s no hello. She’s never been much of a one for pleasantries and Copley is still on her shit list, as far as she’s concerned.

“A travelling merchant who liked to write down stories. A handful of journals collecting dust in a library backroom someone recently found and transcribed. There’s a story he claims he heard from a sailor. By his account the sailor was insane, and the story reads like fiction. But here’s the thing: it reads like _familiar_ fiction.”

“Please get to the point.”

“A demon in a box of metal that they dumped in the ocean. He said to never sail north of Fair Isle.”

They told him. Because of course they did. That there was another they needed to find. Enlisted his help in tracking down Quynh.

Andy’s hand shakes so bad she drops the phone.

“What is it?” Nile says, scrambling up off the couch to grab the phone off the floor and hand it back.

She grips it hard now, hand turning white around the cell. “That’s a big area.” And they’ve checked it before. Well. Parts of it.

“We can use sonar. Underwater drones. We can map the sea floor from a boat and get clear pictures from underwater. If she’s there, we’ll find her.”

“Book us a boat, and let me know when the arrangements are made.” She hangs up.

Then staggers over to the nearest chair and all but collapses into it.

“Andy? Are you alright?” Booker asks, moving to kneel next to her. Peering up at her face.

“I- I don’t know.” She turns to Nile. “Go get Nicky and Joe. Tell them to get their asses over here. It’s an emergency.” And whatever issues they have with each other, they can fucking stow until they get Quyhn out.

This is the best lead they’ve had in five hundred years.

“Talk to me, boss,” Booker pleads, still on the floor.

“When everyone’s here. I need to tell this once.” Because she’s barely holding it together, as-is.

Booker surges to his feet, striding the length of the room and dragging a hand through his hair.

Until the door opens, and he sees them again.

Nile is first in, ignoring the turmoil the two behind her bring. She drags a chair over to face Andy, resting her hands on her knees.

Nicky follows, a hand behind his back; support or restraint for the human thundercloud behind him.

“We’re here,” says Nicky. “Talk to us.”

Booker stopps stock-still, mid-pace when the door opens. Frozen. Staring.

Joe would have to go around, through, or over Andy to get at him. 

“Copley found a lead,” Andy says before anyone can come to blows or start a conversation she hasn’t the patience for. “On Quynh.”

Joe cuts through all the bullshit with the only appropriate response: “When do we leave?”

All the air leaves her in a single _whoosh_. “Soon as Copley can book us a boat. We need to get our asses to England.”

“We flying?” Booker asks, snapping out of it as soon as he has something to do.

“Yeah. Book the tickets,” she replies. Slowly rises to her feet, looking at each of them in turn. “This doesn’t negate what happened. What we’re doing. No alcohol on the boat. I see one goddamn bottle and someone’s swimming.”

She meets Joe’s gaze. “You two need to hash it out? Keep it on deck. I don’t want anything but your ugly faces getting broken.” 

There’s maybe a hint of a fond, exasperated smile that accompanies the words. “Can you live with that?”

He nods without hesitation, gripping Nicky’s hand, that somehow found its way to his somewhere during the conversation. “It’s Quynh,” he says like that’s more important than any betrayal.

It is. 

It doesn’t make the bastard forgiven. It just means he’s willing to tolerate him while they try to right the biggest wrong of their collective existence.

Half his lifetime. She’s been drowning for half the years he’s had with Nicky.

It’s unconscionable. He’d give anything but Nicky to make it right.

Having to share space with _him_ is a far lesser evil.

“Alright. Everybody pack. We’re going to the nearest airport as soon as we’ve cleaned our footprints.”

That means Nicky has a practice yard to disassemble.

He takes the longest, even though Joe and Nile help. But three hours later they’re in the cars and back on the road, Andy and Booker in one, with Nile choosing to ride with the boys.

They already have two cars and nobody wants to test the powder keg of Joe and Booker in a confined space until they absolutely have to.

The uneasy peace persists, mostly because everyone’s careful to give Joe enough space. Including, if not especially, Booker.

He doesn’t want to force the conflict any more than anyone else. Even though he knows it’s inevitable.

They don’t stop until after they arrive in London the next afternoon. All exhausted from the long day of travel and the stress and hope of finding Quynh again.

“We do this, every few years,” Booker says to Nile as he checks them into the hotel. “Get a boat. Look for her. For weeks or months at a time. We always start with hope. We always end with… something else.” His gaze skitters away from her as he trails off.

“Is this time different?” she asks.

He shrugs. “Who knows. We have a lead and the technology is a lot better than it used to be.”

He’d thought he was beyond hope. Perhaps not. Because under the words is the spark of _something._

Everything happens for a reason. Nicky’s mantra.

Booker always thought it was bullshit.

If everything happens for a reason, he pissed God off while he was alive and this is purgatory or hell. Then his immortality is nothing more than a punishment.

But Nile came along just in time to save them all from his stupidity. And this lead came along… yeah.

So maybe there’s a sliver of it, buried somewhere deep.

He doesn’t quite believe, but he doesn’t _not_ believe either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, comments appreciated. Thanks for reading!
> 
> And if you've a mind to join, we have an Old Guard [discord! ](https://discord.gg/kDJpjxx)


	3. Where Hope Goes to Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The search for Quynh at sea begins

Two days later finds them all on a dock in the north of England. Copley’s here, having made all the arrangements. They walk along the gangplank onto the ship, hauling their gear and taking a look around what will be their new home for the foreseeable future.

Copley heads up to the helm to show Andy the controls while Nicky and Joe go below-decks to claim the best bunk. Leaving Booker and Nile standing on the wide deck, staring out over the water.

“Ever been to sea?” he asks her as they lean on the rail.

She shakes her head.

“You’re in for a treat. Keep your eyes on the horizon. The nausea passes eventually.”

Great. Sounds like fun.

“You get seasick?”

“Not anymore. It’s been over a hundred years since it bothered me.”

“You guys do this often, then?”

He nods. “Yeah. Every five to ten years. Way back, it was harder. One of us had to tie a rope around our waist and dive down to the bottom. The pressure hurts your ears, and you can only hold your breath so long. Then you either surface, or let yourself drown.”

Nile doesn’t ask. There’s years of trauma buried under that statement and she can see it in each and every one of them.

Andy’s sheer determination right now, spine of steel. Unbowed and unyielding.

There’s something about the way Nicky blew out a breath and rolled his shoulders before stepping on board. The way his jaw went hard and his lips disappeared. She’s not sure what it is, but she’s never seen it before in him.

Joe is the opposite, smiling soft and breathing like he hasn’t taken a deep breath in decades. The man obviously loves the sea.

Booker’s resigned. It seems to be his constant state of being lately. But his smiles have been coming easier, and his feet drag less.

Nile nods to a case at his feet. “I didn’t know you played.”

“I don’t,” he says with a chuckle. “Thought I might learn. Turns out I have time.”

“I could show you. My dad taught me before he died.”

He looks over at her, smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I’d like that.”

…

Andy learns the controls easily. This is the one skill aside from fighting that they’ve maintained over the years. They come to the sea often, and stay as long as they can bear. 

“Did you consider my invitation?” she asks Copley.

“I did. If it’s still open, I’d like to join you.” He waits patiently for her answer, arms behind his back. Gaze even.

“You sure? These trips. They tend to get volatile. And I doubt the lack of alcohol will improve that.”

He nods. “I’d like to get to know your crew. Learn how to make amends.” There’s something genuine in what he says. Earnest. Like he believes in what they stand for.

She wonders if that will survive closer inspection. They’re hardly saints, whatever he’s told himself.

…

Everything happens for a reason. Except this.

Never this.

There is no reason. No excuse. To torture someone so, for half a millennia.

Half his lifetime.

Half his time with the other half he cannot imagine existence without.

Yet Andy and she…

They had longer. And then were torn apart by the cruellest of fates.

By those who, in their righteousness, broke something true and right, and good.

Nicky believes in their purpose. In his. 

But Quynh is where his faith falters. And the sea is the place his hope goes to die. 

It’s not that he doesn’t hope. It would be so much easier if he didn’t, really.

No the problem is that he does. Every. Single. Time. They’ve spent years. Decades looking for her.

Centuries knowing she’s down there. Suffering every moment of her existence.

And every time they stay until hope is a shrivelled, rotten thing. And they return to land with their guilt and the knowledge that guilt accomplishes _nothing._

Nicky’s tired. He just wants to know she’s not suffering anymore. Death would be a kindness, he thinks.

The realisation hits him like a meteor.

…

It is beyond cruel.

Horrifying, really.

When Andy knows she could die. Of a gunshot wound or an infection or a fever or of _old age_ , of all things.

But the woman she loved for millennia drowns. Every moment of every goddamn day and night. Trapped. _Alive, but for what._

Andy? She could die of anything.

At any moment.

She’d trade that to Quynh. _For. Quynh._ In a heartbeat.

But she goddamn fucking _can’t._

…

He finds her at the helm.

Of course he does.

It’s the one place here where she can be doing something useful. Meaningful.

“Hey,” she says over her shoulder with a hint of a smile.

“Hey,” he replies.

She turns away from the controls, somehow feeling the tension in him from across the room. “What’s wrong?”

Always cuts straight to the bone, that one. Nicky smiles, shaking his head. “I didn’t understand. I didn’t think. I’m sorry.”

“Didn’t understand what?”

His gaze strays to her two new scars. The one he’s seen on her shoulder, and the one he knows her side bears, beneath her shirt. Then out over the ocean.

“Oh,” she says, gaze dropping as she turns back away from him. “Yeah. _That_.”

He comes up behind her, arms wrapping around her over the short back of the raised chair mounted on the bridge. She leans into the touch.

“There’s nothing I can do to change it, much as I’d love to.” Her voice comes out soft, and rough.

He nods, chin brushing her forehead. Eyes stinging.

“Do you think this time will be different?” His voice is even softer than hers, barely audible past the lump in his throat.

“I hope,” she says simply, and the words utterly devastate him.

He can’t choke back the sob, and he can’t hide it, pressed to her back as he is.

She takes his arms, opening them to drag him around beside her, turning in the chair to wrap around him. Head to his chest and impossibly strong _mortal_ arms tight around him, hands gripping his back.

Joe finds them like that, bound and held in their grief. He watches for a moment, shrugs, and goes to wrap his arms around both of them.

No words are needed. They grieve, and have so very many reasons to. He doesn’t ask which reason it is this time. Just lays his head over Andy’s and hangs on.

…

It doesn’t sound like music. Not yet. Still stuttering notes and the just-off twang of a string strummed but not held quite right.

They sit side by side on one of the bunks that line the hallway in the hold, him with the old beat-up guitar he found in the pawn shop the day before they set out.

There were other instruments. Cleaner. Newer. Prettier. But this worn old thing resonated with him, and it’s the one he chose.

He won’t realise until much later that the most beat-up of them all got that way from not just hard use, but much love.

The body of the guitar isn’t worn through the enamel; wood grain exposed; from neglect, but from use.

Perhaps some day he’ll be the same.

She teaches him a song her father taught her, back before he died.

“It’s the first song he ever taught me.” Her gaze goes distant and her shoulders slump. “I wish I still had his guitar.”

He sets the instrument aside to put an arm around her until he feels her take a deep breath and roll her shoulders. Then he picks the guitar back up to continue his clumsy plunking.

It brings a smile to her lips, though it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

…

The searching is so much faster than it used to be. The little submarine-drone thing (ROV, as Copley and Nile call it) searches the ocean floor in a way they never could. Clean, crisp detail of everything down there.

Before, they could have missed her by meters and never known it. Just a part of the endless futility of the search.

But days of searching finds them nothing but old wrecks. Tempers run shorter and shorter.

Booker allows himself to be seen across the deck by Joe -- he’s been doing a very good job of avoiding the man up until that point – And Joe just strides over, grabs a handful of shirt, snarls something unintelligible, and throws him overboard.

Nile tosses him a life preserver, and Nicky drags him in.

Nicky doesn’t speak to either of the men for the rest of the day. Theirs are not the only tempers at play here.

That evening a half-cooked meal ends up splattered across the wall of the kitchen and the crew gets to find that Copley can also – thank god – cook.

Joe finds him by the rail after the rest have eaten. After Nicky’s had enough time and space.

“Nico?” he says softly.

He doesn’t respond, but something in the man’s posture says he heard.

Joe moves closer, ducking up under Nicky’s arm. The tension in him eases as Joe takes his position against Nicky’s side and each man drapes an arm over the other’s back.

“ _I hate this,”_ he whispers in Italian. _“I hate that she’s drowning in the dark and we still haven’t found her. I hate that we get to be happy while others suffer. And I am a selfish man, because I would not trade my happiness for theirs, if given the choice. I would choose you. Every time.”_ His voice breaks on _you._

Joe pulls him down for a deep, slow kiss. “You know that I choose you also.” He smiles. “Albeit with a lot less guilt. You are very Catholic.”

Nicky snorts out a laugh and the tears he didn’t know he was holding in trail down his cheeks. But he smiles, a soft genuine thing. “Thank you,” he says. “I have been navel-gazing.”

“My belly-button’s been afire with rage for months and I don’t hear you complaining. You’re allowed a day of peeve.” Mirth shines in Joe’s gaze. “Though mostly because it turns out Copley can cook and your histrionics did not ruin the day.”

Now Joe’s the one who goes overboard, though there are arms around him and Nicky’s laughing so hard as they go over that he swallows a lungful of water when they hit. Joe has to haul him back to the boat, where he coughs up a lung before rolling on top of Joe and kissing him hard.

Andy, drawn by the sight of them going over, takes advantage of their distraction to throw a bucket of seawater on them. “Get a room,” she says. “And Nicky. Get something to eat before Booker takes your share.”

Nicky is laughing as he rises to his feet and pulls Joe up to stand.

Joe can always do that to him. For him. Arm-in-arm and dripping all over, they head belowdecks to find Nicky something to eat.

…

Copley and Booker talk. They are the odd ones out, and well they know it. The ones who nearly ruined things for the rest. ‘On thin ice’, as it were. But they have a shared grief that brought them together in the first place and it’s an oddly comforting thing to be able to talk about it openly. To discuss what might have happened if their original plan had worked.

If the samples from that fake mission had been enough.

Joe and Nicky were never supposed to be taken. Merrick changed the plan.

Booker would never have traded them for the chance to die. But he can hardly explain that now, can he?

His intention means nothing when they nearly ended up locked away as lab rats for decades.

But Copley has done his research and he tells Booker stories of their exploits and the good they did some generations later without ever knowing. That part is nice. Seeing the purpose that Nicky always speaks of but Booker never put much stock in.

Someone has been leaving books in his bunk. At first he thought it was Joe, but the self-help books have actually been… helpful?

He never intended on reading them, but he still has trouble sleeping some nights and it was the closest thing he had to try to numb his mind to sleep.

Instead, he finds himself taking notes. Leaving bookmarks. Highlighting passages. Learning and research have always been a hobby of his, and this is a peculiar variation on that. 

Booker is discovering he is very messed up.

Well. He knew that. But now he’s discovering the _how_ and the _why._

Nile flashes a knowing smile when she spots the bookmarks.

So. Her doing, then.

He asks if she has any more and another seven appear in his bunk that same evening. She doesn’t offer to talk about the fact that he’s obviously reading them. Yet somehow he can tell she’s proud of him for it.

And somehow. In a way that hurts deep, deep inside. He likes that he’s making her proud.

That’s not why he does it. But maybe it means he’s not so very lost after all.

…

What is hope.

Is it the feeling that your life has purpose?

Is it waking up in the morning and wondering what the new day brings? A joy in anticipation?

Is it being surrounded by people you trust. People who love you and protect you?

Is it having people to protect.

Is it a chance at redemption.

A new start?

Is it finally, _finally_ finding a metal tomb at the bottom of the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's left a comment. I love to hear what people think of this. More to come!
> 
> Come join us in the [discord! ](https://discord.gg/kDJpjxx)


	4. Unfathomable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not the place hope goes to die. Not anymore. They've finally found her.

Days pass and the tension ratchets up on the ship.

After weeks it feels as though someone is tightening one of Booker’s guitar strings, twisting and twisting. Slowly. Stretching the string so taut the slightest vibration could snap it in two, lashing out and curling back away from itself.

They begin to avoid each other.

Nicky and Joe have the captain’s cabin. It’s either that or have the rest of them exposed to the two _in flagrante_ pretty much anywhere on the ship.

Giving them the only private sleeping space is for all of their sanity, really.

Plus it puts a door between Joe and Booker. Which is a relief because if Joe wants to strangle him in his sleep, Book will at least hear him coming.

The weeks give them time to plan. Normally they don’t bother with that. The plan is always: find her. Bring her up.

But Andy can’t just dive down and let herself die and wake up again while they secure cables to Quynh’s tomb.

They’ve all taken dive training over the years. As cathartic as dying over and over and over again to find Quynh is, they can stay down longer and search better with the gear. With the training.

If. _When_ they find her, Nicky and/or Joe will go down to secure the iron maiden to be hauled up. They won’t try to cut her out down there because who knows how she’ll be, coming out.

Andy knows. She’ll come out swinging, sure as the sun rises.

Andy would go down to do it, but she’d have to come back up slowly. Oxygen toxicity isn’t nearly the same concern when you heal like they do. Sure it’ll be excruciating, but Joe and Nicky can ascend with the maiden and come directly on board.

It would take Andy much, much longer to safely rise from the depths.

So Andy will stay on the ship. She needs something to do to keep from going stir-crazy so she’ll stay on the bridge and at the controls. Copley knows how to run the Remote Operated Vehicle, so he stays by her side in the sheltered bridge, watching the camera feed from the ocean floor a hundred or so meters below them.

It’s a lot more boring than having them go under in person. They miss the diving. The chance to be moving and exploring and _looking for her._

Instead, they walk the ship. Fish from the deck. Joe sketches, as long as Booker’s not in view.

His hands tend to shake when he sees Book, and he’s broken two pencils so far.

Booker mostly stays belowdecks after the first pencil.

They eat together. Nicky insists on that. If they’re all together, they will damn well _eat together._ Maybe a part of him hopes his cooking will work like it has in the past: few disagreements have survived a shared meal he’s cooked, even over hundreds of years.

It does, but only to a point. While he’s eating, Joe does not stare the daggers. He focuses on his food and literally anything in the room but Booker.

Booker helps in this by speaking as little as possible. And laughing even less.

Copley secretly wonders if he’ll survive this trip. The immortals tend to be a little… volatile. And punch first and ask questions later.

What would be serious assault among most others is what passes for a love tap among these people.

The sparring matches often end in broken bones.

That is a rule, he discovers: You stop when you hear the bones break.

Andy insists on partaking. Something about keeping sharp or in shape or… Well. It’s mostly burning off steam. For all of them.

But none of the men want to take her on. So Copley volunteers. Not that he thinks he can take her, but at some point in time he has to show them he can be one of them. Can hold his own, aside from researching and covering their tracks.

And Copley knows how to hold back from breaking a person. It’s not something he has to even think about. He just hopes Andy remembers.

She wipes the deck with him, of course. But she does pull her punches. Her kicks. Her tackles.

Don’t tell his battered body that. It wouldn’t believe it for a heartbeat. His body thinks she tried to kill him.

The ancient warrior is smiling by the time they’re done, and she tugs him to his feet, clapping him on the shoulder. “Good fight,” she says.

He nods. Sure. ‘Good’. That’s a word for it, alright.

After that, Nicky and Joe decide to put on a demonstration.

Watching them spar is… interesting. Joe is all instinct, and Nicky’s all planning. But each knows the other very, very well.

Booker came up when he heard Andy was sparring, and while he hovers by the door to the bridge, he sticks around to watch this too. 

Copley’s a little surprised Joe and Nicky are willing to face each other in combat, based on what he knows of them. And then he sees it. 

Oh.

Well. Their sparring style is very _them_.

When one gets the other one off-balance, they don’t let go. They don’t press their advantage. They use the disadvantage to play off each other. Joe manages to sweep Nicky’s legs out from under him, and Nicky just yanks Joe down on top of him. But they roll, grasping each other’s shoulders and Joe kicks Nicky up and he just gets his feet back under him and hauls Joe back onto his feet.

They face each other. Panting. Grinning like two Cheshire cats. And start all over again.

Every pull. Every throw. Every trip. Is used to help them move around the deck. It’s almost more of a dance than a fight. And utterly captivating to watch. 

Which is why Booker doesn’t see it coming.

Not a word is spoken. They don’t telegraph their intentions. But these two can hold a conversation with but a glance. 

So when Joe flings Nicky and he rolls into a ball and pops back to his feet in front of Booker, Booker doesn’t think to disappear. To move. To get out of the way. Nicky’s not going to hit him anyways. 

No he grins and grabs Booker by the arm, yanking and pivoting to fling him at Joe. “You’re up,” he says, smoothly turning to lean against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, as Booker faces a man who’d rather never look at him again.

Joe could catch the wide-eyed man with a fist to his excessive nose. He doesn’t. It’s Joe’s only concession in the fight. Gives Booker the chance to roll his shoulders and drop to a fighting stance, hands up near his face.

And then it’s _on_. 

Booker’s hesitant, at first. Even he thinks Joe should get a free shot or three. But Joe comes at him so hard, so fast, so _brutal_ , that he has to up his game just to keep from getting decimated in the first round. 

It’s a hard fight. Joe thrusts his foot into Booker’s stomach and he staggers back but grabs the foot and yanks Joe off balance, slamming his back and his head into the metal plating of the deck. He doesn’t close the distance or press his advantage, letting Joe regain his feet.

Mistake, that. The next kick nails him across the temple and he blinks back tears only to take a fist to the nose. Another to the stomach. His knee crunches as it’s kicked out hard from the inside, patella popping to stick grotesquely off the outside of his leg and it just looks _wrong._ He crumples, crying out from the pain. Falling to his other knee and driving his fist hard to Joe’s inner thigh as he moves back in.

The blow barely staggers Joe, though he grunts in pain. And then elbows Booker hard, _hard_ in the jaw, sending him sprawling.

Joe is calculatedly cruel. The bout ends automatically when one of them breaks a bone. Or when one yields. But they know precisely the strength it takes to break one another. Joe stays just this side of the threshold.

And Booker refuses to yield, though he’s losing badly. His heart’s not really in it; fighting back. But Joe’s raring for a fight.

So every time Booker staggers to his feet, Joe lays into him. Again and again. Over and over. Until he doesn’t. Until he just lays there, blinking up at Joe. Too exhausted to continue.

“What?” Joe snarls. “Had enough? If you’d had your way we’d _still be there_. They’d be cutting us into pieces and for _what?”_

Booker’s lack of answer only serves to enrage him more. “They mocked us. They mocked me for asking Nicky if he was alright. What do you think they’d have done if they’d had time enough to get _bored?_ You think they’d have stopped at words? That they’d have kept us together for long years in that lab? What did you think they’d accomplish? That they’d find out how to kill us and then just _let you die?_ When they could have kept us all forever except Andy and _you almost killed her, you son of a bitch!”_

He’s breathing hard, eyes wide as he looms over Booker and everything he’s wanted to scream boils up from his stomach and bleeds out onto the traitor. “After she stopped healing. After the grenade and the gas. When you left us behind, to get her out.” There’s no accusation there, for the choice to leave him and Nicky behind. They got Andy out. That’s what mattered. “Do you know what Keane did to Nicky.”

His voice goes quiet and no one there, watching this happen, dares to breathe.

“He put his gun in my Nicolo’s mouth, and pulled the trigger. He blew the back of his head all over the floor. Just a mess of brains and blood and _I didn’t know if he was going to wake up._ ”

Nico steps up next to Joe. “I am here,” he says softly. “Still here.” 

Joe raises his gaze from Booker to meet Nicky’s too-blue eyes, and his anger breaks. He chokes back a sob as Nicky drags him in. Pulls Joe’s head to his chest. “There. You hear that? It is the other half of your heart, and it beats for you.”

It is an achingly intimate moment. Nile wants to look away. Copley wants to give them privacy and he wants to record every moment of it from the initial sparring session until what he sees now. Such a moment should be preserved. 

Though perhaps best it is not.

Andy lets out a breath as Joe melts into Nicky, and moves in to help Booker to his feet, gently tugging him towards the bridge and the stairs down. Best he give Joe some space again.

Nile and Copley turn to follow, unseen by the two who stand, lost in the world that is each other and their grief.

And then crumple to sit, legs tangled and arms around each other. Swaying together. Lost. And in each other: found.

…

It happens only days later. Copley and Booker are watching the camera feed on a laptop at the helm. Staring at the same thing they’ve stared at for weeks: sediment on the ocean floor, dotted with fish and rocks and the occasional shell of a wreck.

Until.

Both men go from sitting to standing in an instant, though neither dares hope. They’ve had a few times like this. Where something approximately the right size appears on the screen and they get excited. For nothing.

Joe and Nicky are lounging on the deck, sweating and too-warm in their unzipped and folded down wetsuits. Displaying toned arms and chests without meaning to put on a show.

Copley moves the ROV closer. Pans across the object. It’s the right size. The right shape. The little drone’s light illuminates hard surface. Hollow space.

And eyes.

Copley falls out of his chair.

Booker shouts.

The eyes are wide and terrified. More than a little mad. And the mouth beneath gasps.

Nile and Andy rush up the stairs from below. “What is it?” asks Andy.

Booker shows her the laptop, well beyond capable of words. Not entirely sure he’s seeing what he’s seeing.

“Quynh,” Andy says, voice breaking. Eyes wide at her first view of her oldest friend. Of her lover. In five centuries.

“Boss?” Nicky says from the doorway.

“Suit up,” she says, ever the general. “We found her.”

Nicky’s already pulling his wetsuit up.

Joe’s way ahead of him, grabbing the diving gear and shrugging into his tank.

“Come on,” says Andy. “We need to get the winch ready.” She and Nile move to get the cables and the straps as Copley holds the ROV in position. Watching her drown while they prepare to save her.

It is an image that will linger in his mind for a long, long time.

Booker drops anchor when he has the ship in position, cutting the engine. And moves to watch as Nicky and Joe jump into the water, following the winch cable down.

It is the longest few minutes of any of their lives, the time it takes to get down to her. To secure the straps around the dreadful iron maiden and for Nicky to swim back to the surface, ignoring the screaming pain in his lungs and legs to tell them to start the winch.

Nile hauls Nicky in as Andy turns the winch on, retracting the cable with the most precious cargo at the other end. 

The receptacle of so much fear and pain. Of so much hope.

Booker gets the torch ready. They’ll probably need to cut her out.

Copley reels in the ROV, heart racing. This. This is why he joined them. To do some _good_.

Ending this woman’s torment may be the most good he’ll do in a lifetime.

The winch strains as it reels in, creaking against the weight of the water and the metal. And then the wretched, awful thing surfaces, scraping against the back of the boat as it’s dragged up.

Joe rode the line up, staying with the maiden, and he lets go as they surface. Nicky pulls him up and holds him as he writhes in pain, watching Quynh’s coffin weep water. 

They have her. She’s safe.

As the water drains they can hear her cough. Sputter. Horrific choking noises straight out of Nile and Booker’s nightmares. “Cut it,” Andy demands. She’d do the honors, but she wants to be the first thing Quynh sees as she emerges.

She wants to see Quynh.

Booker starts up the torch and begins to cut through the chain.

Quynh tries to claw her way out, keening wail growing louder and louder with each passing second until they pry open the crusted metal.

“Quynh? It’s me, your And-

She doesn’t get the chance to finish as a hand closes around her throat and she’s flung backwards. Her feet slide out from under her on the wet deck and she goes down hard.

Hits her head on the edge. And slips off into the sea.

Nicky abandons Joe to lunge at Quynh, even as Booker dives off the boat.

Quynh’s gaze holds no semblance of the woman he knew as she swipes a hand across his face, nails digging in and clawing furrows in his skin.

“What the hell?” says Nile, moving to help restrain Quynh and getting an elbow to the nose for her trouble. She staggers back, blood pouring out and hands coming up. Her eyes water uncontrollably and she staggers back from her new feral friend.

Joe kicks off his swimming fins, tearing off his mask and lurching to his feet as Nicky decides he’s had enough and tackles Quynh to the deck while she rains blows down on his head with her bare hands.

“Quynh!” Joe bellows. “It is us! Yusuf and Nicolo. Stop _fighting_!”

In the water, Booker finds Andy quickly. He gets to her even before she dips below the surface, turning her onto her back and hooking an arm around her as he swims them back to the boat. Copley helps pull her on board, turning her onto her side and thumping his hand into her back.

She coughs, spitting out water and blinking bleary eyes as she tries to push herself up and just falls back down to the deck. Blood pouring down her temple.

Quynh kicks Nicky off her and lunges at Andy. Joe barely manages to get in the way, getting dragged to the deck and smashing his head for his trouble. “Quynh!” Nicky shouts, grabbing her foot and pulling her away. “You can’t! Stop! Andy’s mortal, Quynh. You’re going to kill her!”

The words are the first thing to penetrate past the rushing of water in her mind.

She slows. Pauses, watching the woman who was hers struggle to lift herself. There’s red coming down her face from a cut at her temple and. The cut is not healing.

Somehow, this detail tells her beyond all others that this is real.

A glance at Nicolo tells her he’s healing just fine. The scratches she left are almost closed.

But Andromache’s is not.

“Quynh,” she croaks, lifting her head to look at her. Eyes shimmering. “Quynh.”

The woman in question scrambles away from the lot of them, pressing her back to the rail. She can still feel the water in her lungs. The pressure and cold on her skin. The metal of her tomb around her.

And yet. Sunlight. _Sunlight_. It feels warm on her. What. What is warm? A lost memory in the endless chill. She is on a thing that must be a ship but it is made of metal. How. Everything is too loud. Too bright. She pulls her hands over her head, curling her knees up in front of her chest.

Nicky helps Joe to his feet and pulls the diving tank off Joe, leaving him in the dark wetsuit. They move as one to sit in front of Quynh. Out of reach, but easily seen. “Quynh. We are here. We took far too long to find you, but we’re here.”

Joe leans his shoulder into Nicky’s. “It is good to see you,” he says.

It is. She is the best thing he’s seen in half a millennium.

He thinks Nicky might forgive him thinking so.

Nicky would not only forgive him, but agree. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are going to be a little harsh for a bit. Drowning for half a millennia will leave its mark, but I'll try to treat it kindly. Bear with me: it'll be happy again. Promise.
> 
> I love comments. Please let me know how you liked it!
> 
> Aaaand... come join us in the [discord! ](https://discord.gg/kDJpjxx)


	5. Doesn't Mean it Stops Hurting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quynh's up. But five hundred years beneath the water does things to a person. And one does not recover from that in a day.

Andy crawls toward Quyhn and the only thing that stops her from getting to her is that Joe and Nicky each reach out to drag her back. “Sit here. Talk to her. Give her some space,” says Joe.

Quynh is not herself, and they will not risk Andy’s life to her current state. 

Andy slumps down next to them, chest heaving and leaning on Joe’s shoulder. He wraps an arm around her, pulling her in. Eyes never leaving Quynh.

Nile is going to need to wash her shirt. It’s covered in her own blood.

Copley stands back and watches, feeling like an intruder in a deeply intimate moment.

Booker comes to sit down next to Nicky. He’s seen from inside her eyes for so long. It’s good to finally see her face. “I’m Booker,” he says softly.

She blinks at him through her hair. “Drinker,” she corrects.

Andy lets out a very unladylike snort, and Joe collapses into Nicky’s side in mirth.

“Not anymore,” he replies, lost beneath the laughter. But he’s smiling too.

“New one,” she says as Nile peels off her shirt, wiping her face with it. 

“I’m Nile, and you may _not_ give me a nickname.”

That brings a smile to Quynh’s lips and Andy drinks it in like her first ever sunrise.

“Copley,” a voice says from behind them. “I’m not immortal, but you knew that.”

Quynh nods. There are so many questions. So many, many questions. But words do not come easy. Few things push past the bubbles, in her mind. Most of her is still under the water. And she wonders if this is a dream. Something she made up. If so, she never wants to wake up.

Perhaps she finally succumbed to the death that dogged her so long and this is the afterlife.

But if this is the afterlife, why is she naked, and Andy is not.

“Clothes?” she asks.

The black man nods. Copley. He said his name was Copley. “I’ll get them.”

Andy moves towards Quynh again, and this time Nicky and Joe let her. Quynh raises her hand, pressing her fingers to the edge of the cut on Andy’s temple. She winces. “When?” Quynh says.

“A few months ago. None of us knows why.”

“You didn’t die.”

Andy shakes her head, flashing an incandescent, watery smile. “No. We used medicine. Bound my wounds. I lived. And- 

Her voice breaks. “I got to see you again.”

The women fall into each other, holding on tight and rocking back and forth, whispering in each other’s ears.

The others? They watch. Nicky takes a deep, shuddering breath as he realises this is it. This is the time. The sea is the place his hope is restored. At last. Joe pulls him in tighter, weaving their fingers together and hanging on tight.

Booker moves away before Joe realises he’s touching him, standing and turning to check on Nile. “You alright?”

She nods, gaze rapt on Quynh. Seeing a side of Andy she’d known was there. The grief. The anguish. The guilt. 

They fit together like the other two, and Nile can maybe see how Booker feels like the odd one out.

“Why don’t we see if we can’t scrounge up something to eat?” Booker says, feeling like an intruder here. 

Nile peers up at him, blood still streaking her face. “Yeah. Why don’t we. They’ll be hungry soon.” She links arms with him and gestures with her head towards Copley to join them. 

Copley hands a folded pile of clothes with a dry towel on top to Nicky, who sets it on the deck between them and the women. 

Nile links Copley in with her free arm, having to stifle the absurd urge to hum ‘Off to See the Wizard’ as they head towards the bridge.

Booker does it for her, very softly, when they’re out of earshot of the others. The three barely manage to hold the laughter in until they get belowdecks. Then they drape over each other with snorts and guffaws and tears and maybe more than a little of that is just the sheer relief of having Quynh out. 

And maybe a little is the joy of having each other to share this moment with.

“Alright they’re going to get hungry eventually,” says Copley once they finally get a handle on their mirth. “Let’s get to it.”

Above decks Quynh and Andy hold each other for a long, long time. Finally Quynh pulls back and Joe hands her the towel. “You have a lot to catch up on,” he says. “But we have time.”

“Time,” says Quynh as she shrugs into the shirt and pulls on the leggings, ignoring the underwear. “How long?”

Andy takes a deep breath. Squares her shoulders. “Five centuries,” she whispers.

Five.

Centuries.

The sheer magnitude is unfathomable, even for one who lived it. Died it.

_Drowned it._

For five hundred years.

“Why?” Quynh screams, lunging for Andy. Reaching hands like claws for the woman who stumbles back, eyes wide and pained.

Nicky grabs her around the waist and it’s only her sheer rage that saves them. If she thought to use any of her skill he’d be on the ground and she’d have her hands on Andy’s throat. Instead she claws furrows down his arms as Joe moves to stand at Andy’s side.

“Why didn’t you find me!” she roars, kicking and flailing and bending to bite a chunk out of Nicky’s arm, spitting blood and flesh onto the deck.

It’s all he can do to keep his hold, hissing out an agonised breath. That _fucking hurt._

There’s something about human teeth that just hurt worse than any other animal, and Nicky’s been bitten by a few.

“We tried,” says Joe, wincing at the oozing red divot in Nicky’s bicep. At the blood pouring down Quynh’s chin. “We looked for you. For decades.”

_“Why did you stop?!”_

“It was killing her,” says Nicky. “It was killing all of us. So we left you beneath the sea to find better information. To narrow it down. They hid your location. There were so few leads, and none took us as close as this one. Here it is too deep. We could never have found you without today’s technology. I am sorry,” he says, voice gone rough. “We are sorry. There is nothing we can do to take it back. I’m sorry.”

She slumps in his arms as Andy staggers into the rail, sobbing.

“Why?” Quynh says, rocking back and forth. “Why.”

Nicky’s arm knits itself back together as he holds her tight, for a different reason now. “We tried. It was never enough. But we tried. I’m sorry.”

Sorry.

Sorry. What a pitiful failure of a word. What is sorry to half a millennia of choking to death in the cold and dark.

What is sorry to breaking off your nails against your metal coffin, over and over and over again.

To screaming and never having the words emerge.

What is sorry to your friends. Your lover. Your _family_ abandoning you. Leaving you to that because _they can’t stand it anymore._

Sorry is nothing.

It is pointless. It is useless.

She wants the idiot Italian to choke on sorry for a decade or two and see how it feels.

“Where is my bow?” she says, needing a weapon in her hands, and suddenly desperately missing her favourite.

“I have it,” replies Andy. “It’s in my bunk, below.”

Nicky’s gaze snaps to her. “After all this time?”

She nods. She brings it with her, every time. Just in case.

“I want it. Bring it to me.”

That draws the smile back to Andy’s lips. Quynh was always… direct. One of many, many things she loves about her. She nods, shrugging out of Joe’s arms. Steps carefully around Nicky and Quynh, out of arms’ reach. Hating herself for it. And makes a beeline for below decks.

She keeps the bow oiled. Waxed. Wrapped in oilcloth in a leather case specially made for it. Replaces the string often. It might break if someone wanted to fire it, after so long. But it’s here. Nicky and Joe retrieved it when they rescued Andromache so long ago. Andy’s kept it, safe and cared for, ever since.

She ignores the other three as she walks through the kitchen towards her bunk. The food does smell good though.

“We thought she might be hungry,” says Nile.

Andy nods acknowledgement before heading back up with the leather case under her arm.

Quynh is leaning into Nicky’s arms now. She was never much for hugging but. He feels solid-yet-soft and strong and warm and-

And it just feels nice to have arms around her again. She lets herself bask until she sees the case. 

“I tried to take care of it,” Andy says as she reverently pulls the bow out and unwraps it. “But I have no idea if it can still be fired. We can make you a new one. They make gorgeous bows now. Other kinds of weapons, too. You’d love them.”

Nicky drops his arms and lets her pad over to Andy. 

Quynh holds her hand out. Closes it on the bow, snatching it out of the case and to her chest. Andy hands her the string. “I haven’t shot it in centuries. I was afraid to break it.”

Quynh attaches the string, pulling it taut. Lets out a breath as she draws it, arrowless. Somehow this makes her feel more herself than any other thing so far. “Arrows?”

A quick shake of Andromache’s too-short hair tells her there aren’t any. Quynh flashes her a _look_. What is the point of a bow without arrows. 

“Sorry,” she says.

That word again. Quynh snarles.

“Like I said: I didn’t know if it could be fired. So there’s no point in having arrows for it. We’ll get you arrows,” she promises.

“Why is the ship metal.”

That earns her another smile. “Honestly?” Andy says. “I have no fucking clue. People make everything out of metal now and I have no idea how it floats. Things changed a lot over the last few centuries, and very little of it makes any sense. Most of it looks and feels like magic to me.” Or witchcraft. “Though I am repeatedly assured it’s technology.”

“How?”

“Something about buoyancy. Never made any sense to me. In any case, yes. It is made of metal. And also floats. Would you like to see it?”

She shakes her head. “Sunlight. Need to feel sun.”

Joe flashes a grin. “I have just the thing.” 

He pulls over one of the free-standing hammocks they have set up on the deck. Andy climbs in and pats the spot next to her.

Quynh tucks the bow back into its case, setting it under the hammock before she carefully lays down next to Andy. Her head finds Andy’s shoulder and fingers move to grasp her hand. “Yes,” she sighs. “This. I need this.”

“Then rest,” says Nicky. “We will keep watch.”

She nods. Closes her eyes and the sun hurts through her eyelids but it feels so good to see anything but dark that she ignores it.

Andy hangs on like Quynh will disappear if she lets go.

Quynh falls asleep first, surrounded by air and warmth and sunlight. With her oldest friend and lover’s hand in hers. Finding a peace she can’t actually remember under the suffocating weight of so much death.

Nicky is as good as his word, dragging over a folding chair and sitting down not far from the hammock. Joe sits at his feet, leaning back against Nicky’s legs.

Andy just watches Quynh, tears trailing down her face. Not quite sure she’s really here. That this is real. She has had many dreams. Not quite so vivid. Or so peaceful. But many.

Perhaps she won’t wake up from this one.

Instead she falls asleep.

Doesn’t wake until after the sky has turned pale and the air has started to cool.

And wakes in a rush as she’s dumped onto cold metal and there’s a voice shrieking over her.

Quynh’s already recovered from her swift and ungainly self-dumping onto the deck, on her feet in a fighter’s stance with Nicky and Joe mirroring her, just out of reach.

“Easy there,” says Joe. “It’s Yusuf. And Nicolo. You’re safe. You’re out.”

Her gaze is wide and unseeing, and she throws a punch at Nicky’s head. He barely dodges out of the way.

“And Andromache,” says a soft voice from not far behind Quyhn. 

She lunges at Joe and he ducks back, untouched. Lunges again and manages to grasp his arm.

Quynh is still very strong, regardless of her time beneath the water. She gets him entirely off balance, staggering towards her.

And then uses her advantage, swinging around behind him. And snaps his neck before Nicky can even close in.

Joe falls dead to the deck with a sickening thud.

Nicky’s caught between running to him and protecting Andy.

He leaves Joe’s cooling corpse to put himself between the two women. Forces his voice to remain smooth and even, as he’s shaken to the core. “Quynh. It’s us. You are safe.”

_You just killed Yusuf._

She snarls at him. 

“Andy. Go get Nile and Booker,” he says.

“I’m not leaving you.”

“I’m not letting you end up like-

He can’t even finish the sentence.

“Go,” he says again. _“Please?”_

She starts backing away, gaze still on Quynh. On her friend.

On the danger.

“Andy?” Quynh says, cocking her head.

“That’s me,” Andy replies, not quite letting the relief that’s crowding in, swamp her. “I go by Andy.”

“And I, Nicky.” He nods to Joe’s still form. “He is Joe.”

Quynh glances over and her eyes go wide. She chokes back something unintelligible and slides to her knees by Joe’s side. “Yusuf. Yusuf, I am sorry. Wake up.” She grasps his shoulder. Shakes gently. Then harder.

Nicky waves Andy towards the helm. Quynh seems calm, but he’d like the backup anyways. He turns to kneel next to her as Joe’s neck makes a terrible sound and he sucks in a breath.

Quynh bows over him, sobbing.

Instead of pulling Joe into his arms, Nicky puts a hand on her back. “He’s okay. He’ll be fine,” he assures her. 

Well. Both of them. He reassures himself too.

Joe sits up, groaning. “Quynh. You still pack a helluva punch,” he teases.

She sobs harder.

Nicky gently pulls her to him, scooping her up into his arms and cradling her to his chest. “It’s getting cold,” he says into her hair. “Let’s get you downstairs.” 

She huddles to his chest and he takes that as assent.

Joe walks beside him, close enough their arms touch. 

Nicky does not look at him. If he looks at Joe, he’ll be the one sobbing. But he presses into the touch.

There’s a crowd at the bottom of the stairs and they all step back to let him through. He walks through the kitchen. Past the head. Between the bunks that flank the passage. All the way to the Captain’s Quarters in the back. The only bunk with its own room and door.

This was their bunk. No longer. If Quynh wakes like this, Nicky wants a door between her and the rest. Between her and Andy. This is the safest place.

He sets her down and she curls into a ball in the bed. He pulls the covers up and she huddles down into them, closing her eyes tight.

Who knows how long he would have stood there if not for Nile’s hand on his shoulder. “We’ll keep an eye on her,” she offers, and Booker’s standing just behind her. He nods. “Go. Eat,” she says.

He goes.

The meal is a solemn affair. Quiet. Joe and Andy and Nicky and scrapes of forks on plates. Nicky’s pressed as close to Joe as he can get and still allow the man’s elbow to move. 

Joe tolerates the crowding without comment. Or maybe pushes in a little. Awkward eating is a small price to pay. Nicky’s shaken. Joe can see that. He’s holding it together because they have work to do.

Once his plate is clean, Nicky sets his fork down. Meets the gazes of the other two. “She shouldn’t sleep alone. Not after so long. But she should wake next to someone familiar.”

That leaves two options.

“We’ll take turns,” Joe says.

“When’s mine?”

Nicky and Joe stare at Andy.

It’s not safe. They all know this.

Sleeping by Quynh’s side is volunteering to be the body that slows her down.

She throws a glass across the room, shattering it against the wall. Trails of water seep away from the shards, flowing with the sway of the ship in the waves.

Nobody knows when it’ll be her turn.

“It’s not fair to her, to sleep next to two lovers entwined,” says Nicky.

No. It isn’t. “So we’ll take turns,” says Joe, again.

“We’ll need to stay asea awhile,” Andy says. “Give her some time to adjust.”

Give them some time to help her out of this fight-or-flight mode.

Joe reaches across the table to grasp her wrist. “We got her out, Boss. The rest? It’s worth all of it to get her well.”

It is. It’s worth everything.

But that doesn’t mean it will be easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are my lifeblood. I treasure every one.


	6. Equilibrium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quynh slowly remembers what it is to be herself.

Nicky takes the first shift, sleeping next to Quynh in the captain’s cabin with a lamp on. He hopes the light will help remind her where she is, when she wakes.

She wakes thrashing more than once. 

Nicky has to fend off another violent attack the first time.

Booker appears at the door, pushing it open with Nile at his back, roused by the noise. Quynh’s got Nicky in a chokehold and he’s doing his best to just keep her preoccupied for as long as possible before he passes out or dies.

Booker hits the light switch, blinding everyone in the room. Quynh cries out, half because it _hurts_ , and half because the sudden light is such a shock.

A moment later she releases Nicky and he rolls onto the floor, collapsing there as he gasps for breath.

Joe pushes past Nile and Booker, dropping to one knee and cupping Nicky’s cheek as he waits for him to breathe easy again. Not speaking. Just there.

Quynh curls into a ball with her back to the bulkhead, eyes squeezed shut and hands clenched white-knuckled on her knees.

This time it’s Andy who slips past the rest, laying down in front of Quynh. “It’s alright. You’re safe,” she says. “We’re here.” She reaches a hand out to brush Quynh’s hair from her face with two fingers.

Despite her panic, Quynh leans into the touch.

Andy can feel her relax by degrees as they stare across at each other in silence. “Would you like something to eat?” she asks. “Maybe a shirt of mine to wear?”

Quynh nods.

Andy takes her hand, tugging her towards the edge of the bed.

Quynh rises to her feet and pads calmly after Andy.

“Chamber pot?” she asks.

Oh. Andy turns to meet her gaze, a grin spreading over her face. “I have a few modern marvels to show you.”

Joe and Nicky hug for a long time, mumbling words of comfort into each other’s cheeks while Nile and Booker go to make some coffee and put the kettle on.

Everyone’s up. Might as well.

Copley reheats the food he made earlier, hoping it’s something she’ll find palatable, at least.

Andy takes the next half-hour to show Quynh the basics of modern plumbing. And electricity. And mirrors. And brushes Quynh’s hair after she finishes using the toilet.

Quynh stares at their reflections, enraptured, the entire time Andy’s hands move over her hair.

“Would you like me to braid it?”

She nods. There’s something calming about the smooth, steady movements and she’s not quite ready for Andromache to be done.

Andy ties it off with a little kiss to the crown of Quynh’s head. “Let’s go eat.”

The others are waiting in the kitchen, quietly hovering while trying to look like they’re _not_ hovering.

Copley fills a bowl and sets it on the counter, stepping back so she can get it without having to be in reach of him. A sign of respect and understanding rather than fear. Quynh dips her head in thanks and goes to sit at the table.

The food turns out to be a little much for her, though more than welcome. The flavor too rich.

It will take time for her to adjust. And for them to adjust to _her._

…

Nicky takes the time a couple days later. To cook a variety of different foods they have on hand. As simply as possible. Plain rice. Pan-fried fish. Roasted chicken. Steamed vegetables. Popcorn.

She tastes each and there’s no conversation aside from her little comments on what she likes. What she doesn’t. And why.

The fish is a hit. She likes it looking as fish-like as possible when she eats it. Stabbing it with her fork. Slimy little creepy slithery things.

Poor company, especially if they managed to get in the maiden with her.

She hates the taste of salt. A bit of sweet is good. A tiny amount of spice. And tea. She can’t get enough of black tea with honey. Her face goes serene when she drinks it

Andy can’t get enough of that expression.

…

Nicky and Joe haven’t slept apart in decades. They never _choose_ to sleep apart. Ever. This is a new experience for them.

There’s no argument. No fighting about it. This needs to be done and if anyone’s worth this sacrifice, it’s her. A few nights won’t kill them.

But they do spend a great deal of their days passed out in a hammock on the deck wrapped in each other’s arms.

Never accuse them of not being adaptable. Just because they can’t have their nights, doesn’t mean they won’t take every opportunity to catch up.

On the sleep, at least. The rest can come later.

…

Quynh thinks their names are hilarious. These tiny, shortened things that are ridiculous fragments of their true selves. Even funnier, is that they seem comfortable with these versions.

Quynh would stab anyone who tried to alter hers.

Nobody tries.

That being said, Booker’s name is too long. The others are all short and simple. His is long. And what is the point of calling him Book. That’s a real word. So she calls him ‘Ook’, laughing all the while.

Booker’s own laughter in response seems a little excessive. She wonders if he’s lost his mind. He’s snorting and crying and every time he begins to calm, he says ‘Ook’, and loses control all over again.

Nile gives him a strange look until he says it again, and then the insanity just spreads to her as well. The words ‘orangutan’ and ‘librarian’ get tossed around amidst the gales of laughter.

No one aside from the two young ones appears to have any clue what’s so funny, so at least Quynh’s in good company.

After that, Nile’s as likely to call him ‘Librarian’ as Booker.

…

They’re careful not to use too much electronics around her, at first. Best ease her into the whole internet thing.

And they try to keep things as bland as possible on the ship. Quiet. No loud music. No overly complicated food. She’s been down there a long time and gets overwhelmed easily.

So when she hears the clumsy plunking of strings on a guitar, she wanders over.

It’s the first time she’s heard music in five hundred years.

Quynh sits in the bunk across from Booker, watching his hands and listening to the first hints of a melody flow from the instrument. Then she lays down, eyes closed and humming softly as she picks up the tune.

Booker plays everything he knows, without a word.

She seems… at peace.

She is.

…

“You are very new,” she says to Nile one day, coming to stand by the rail as the younger woman casts into the sea, hands on a long, sturdy fishing rod.

“In more ways than one, with you lot,” Nile agrees, good-naturedly.

“They did not take long to find you.”

“No with today’s technology and how fast we can travel, they tracked me down real quick. It was a shock, really. Dying. Coming back. Andy. Everything.” She turns to meet Quynh’s gaze, even. “And you.”

Quynh nods as she gazes out over the surface of her tomb. It’s much prettier from this side.

“Thank you,” she says. “For the…” she scrunches her face up. “Sights. Brief.”

“Glimpses?”

Quynh nods. “Yes. That. Of the others. Of your brother and mother. Good things.”

The corner of Nile’s mouth tilts up. “You’re welcome.”

The older woman stands by her side, not speaking again and not moving for a long time.

Nile decides she makes good company.

…

“You could have given me a better view,” she says to Booker one day after he puts the guitar away.

He swallows. Nods. “Yeah. I could have.”

“Drowning and the bottom of a bottle.”

Yep. They covered that. Not much he can do to change it now. His gaze slides away from hers.

“You had pain. Loss of family. You felt… other. And me. You dreamed of me.”

He swallows harder, and it feels like the world is trapped in his throat.

“I tried not to,” he admits.

She huffs out a breath. “I know.”

“And I tried to find you.”

“I know that too.”

It still angers her. That she was down there so long.

But she does not blame him.

No, the blame for that falls upon Andromache. The one who should have found her. Her beloved. Tortured and dying countless times.

Never finding her.

The anger still blazes up.

She still strikes out.

But she returns to herself faster. Remembers where she is.

And slowly, over time, she feels as though she is no longer in the box.

…

They pitch it off into the sea, but not before Joe teaches her how to run the cutting torch. She spends an entire day just cutting the wretched coffin into smaller and smaller pieces until every single one of them could fit into the palm of her hand. Only a pile of rubble remains when she stops. And then hurls each and every one of them into the surging sea, hurling epithets with each swing of her arm. Louder and louder until she’s screaming. 

She doesn’t stop until the last piece is gone. And then sleeps a long, long time.

…

The men sleep next to her. Not together, and part of that feels wrong.

They always slept together. Even when one was keeping watch the other slept curled with his back to the other’s legs.

Nicolo and Yusuf are as one person. It is a fact of their existence. A merging that Quynh and Andy never accomplished. Nor would they want to. They were always happy to be by each other’s side, without all that…

Whatever they are. Softness? No, that’s not it. Andy and Quynh have their soft moments. But they were always something a little different from the men. Not two halves of a whole. But. A pair. Suited. Where one went, the other followed.

She has missed her friend and lover, but she understands why ‘Nicky’ and ‘Joe’ have been chosen as her companions when it is time to rest.

She misses Andromache’s arms around her. Her fierce strength and unwavering purpose.

But she has killed each of the men, more than once. Has attacked before she came to herself.

And so ‘Andy’ remains out of reach. And for all the time they spend together, she misses her.

…

Quynh steals their clothes.

Indiscriminately.

They brought clothes for her, and those are fine.

But that pair of Nile’s flip-flops.

Nile finds her flip-flopping around the deck in them, smiling gleefully at the ridiculousness of the slapping sound.

It seems to give her an inordinate amount of pleasure, so Nile just lets her.

That bikini of Andy’s. It. Does not cover much. And Quynh is entirely unbothered by that. She’s been naked for centuries and she likes the sun on her skin.

Andy all but swallows her tongue every time she sees it, so she’s hardly going to argue.

Joe is having a lot of fun sketching that expression.

Speaking of whom, the zipper pants are _too big for her._ But she cinches them up with a rope-as-makeshift-belt and seems entirely unapologetic about taking them, and the one time he tried to broach the subject he only got as far as opening his mouth before getting a _look_ that silenced any and all future argument.

After that Joe swears she wears them smugly. Nicky thinks Joe is projecting.

He’s not, but Nicky thinks he is.

She sleeps in a t-shirt of Booker’s. He’s fine with that, even though it feels like something Jehanne would have done. Even after all this time, he misses her. Two hundred years and he’d give anything to have her in his arms.

He does _not_ think of Quynh in the same way he does his wife. But the stolen shirt is just fine with him.

Copley has a pair of thick warm wool socks that she pulls on in the evenings and wears with the leggings they actually bought for her. He smiles when he sees them pulled up her calves.

And of course she stole one of Nicky’s hoodies. She wears them with the hood up, like she sees him do. It’s warmer that way and there’s the added benefit that he always looks slightly perturbed when she does it. And Joe looks downright pained.

He’s supposed to be the one stealing Nicky’s hoodies.

…

They decide that Quynh needs more time. Space. To adjust. To acclimatize. To learn how to not strike out for a kill when she’s surprised.

So the ship stays at sea awhile. It keeps the outside world out, and anyone not on this ship safe from Quynh’s less-and-less frequent outbursts.

And while they’re there, Booker and Copley search for a quiet place they can all stay after they return to shore. A place they can gradually reintroduce Quynh to the world. Where they can just exist without having to fight all the time.

They find a cabin in the Balkans, tucked far away from traffic and civilisation, but they’ll have to charter a plane to get there. As little public interaction as possible on the way. Today’s technology is overwhelming enough for people who grew up with it. For Quynh it’s going to be a nightmare. Thus, the cabin. They just need to get her there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the 'Ook' Librarian thing is a direct reference to Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. There's a wizard who was turned into an orangutan by accident. All he ever says is 'Ook' and being as he's the librarian at the Unseen University, everyone calls him the Librarian.
> 
> So that whole segment is an inside joke between Booker and Nile, who have read the books.
> 
> Comments? Comments.


	7. Tragedy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The immortals are travelling to a quiet place for Quynh to recover. Things happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one hurts. I'm sorry.

They arrange to return the ship at a time when the port is quiet. When most boats are out at sea and there won’t be much traffic on the pier.

Fortunately, smaller ports like this one have looked pretty much the same since the advent of sails. It shouldn’t be too much of a strain on Quynh to see it.

They stayed out on the water for a month, and Quynh is sick of it. She wants to go somewhere surrounded by trees and hills with no view of a lake or ocean or so much as a puddle. She wants to eat meat and vegetables and not fish and she thinks she’s earned the right to drink, no matter how her companions have fallen into the bottle in the past. That’s their problem, not hers.

Booker’s honestly a little leery of starting again, though he’s slept better in the last month than he has since he died. He still gets nightmares, but they’re the normal kind. And the pills help, though he doesn’t use them all the time anymore.

Copley’s enjoyed the chance to get to know them all better. To spend some time. But it’s long past time for him to get back home. He’ll get them to the little airstrip where they’ve chartered a plane, and then he’ll leave them to make the rest of the journey to the Balkan mountains on their own.

They hand over the ship and get all their gear unloaded. Quynh gapes at the metal ships around them and the sleek painted little sailboats. At how _colorful_ everything is. 

They rent a van that fits them and all of their gear (barely). It’s a little cramped in there.

Andy drives, of course. She always drives. They put Quynh in the centre seat where she can see straight ahead but not really out the tinted side windows. That should help with motion sickness.

She asks so many questions. They gave her the technology primer and a lot of it makes no sense whatsoever but she’ll take their word on it. But now. Now there’s vehicles passing and they’re about to get on a _plane._ A hollow bird of metal that they can climb inside like a ship and it will take them through the _sky_. She’s skeptical, of course. Though they must trust the machine if they’re willing to let Andy on it, in her condition.

They drive right out on the tarmac, parking next to the plane. One of the benefits of a smaller airstrip. Andy parks and climbs out, turning to help unload the back.

“Everybody get-

She doesn’t finish the sentence.

A wash of red and pink splashes across the side of the clean white van. 

One second she’s climbing out of the van, and the next, half her head is missing.

There are no screams. Only silence as her head splits open and splatters over the dark-tinted windows and she crumples to the asphalt.

Copley stares in horror at the mess on the window by his head. Not quite believing what he’s looking at, even though he’s seen it before.

And then there’s a thunk and a hiss and their eyes water and they gasp for air, not even hearing the squeal of tires and the rev of the engine approaching.

Copley slumps against the window, his head right up against the grey-and-pink blobs that pepper the red.

Quynh falls to the floor of the van.

Nile, behind her, falls out the door, landing at an obscene angle with her head on the hard-top and her feet still above her on the carpet.

Booker opens the door and makes it two steps before he, too, crumples to the asphalt.

Nicky pulls his shirt up, scanning for the threat. Seeing a black vehicle blazing its way towards him. Then he feels a prick in his shoulder and, joining the rest in a coughing fit, falls.

Joe sees the shot coming and tries to take the hit for Nicky. Instead, he chokes on the cloud of smoke around them, falling against Nicky before joining him on the ground.

When they wake, still there in the van next to the plane, she’s gone.

There is no sign of Andy, the people who took her, or where she went.

Only the red.

…

Nicky is the last to stir, and he wakes to the sight of the tear-streaked face of his love. “Wha- What happened?” he says, already looking for a weapon.

“They gassed us,” Joe says, the words strangled.

There’s a wailing noise from somewhere to his left and Nicky turns to see a pair of knees under the van. Or on the other side of it. And a too-shiny scarlet puddle. There are feet too, but he steals his own view of them as he pushes up to his feet and gives Joe a hand up.

“And tranqued you,” Joe adds as he stands.

They move as one around to the other side of the van.

Quynh’s are the knees he saw.

The wail, too, is hers.

She stares wide-eyed at the wash of blood on the tarmac, and her voice breaks around the keening sound.

“Where. Where is she?” he asks.

“Gone,” says Copely. “They came just for this. For her.”

Booker grabs him by the lapels, slamming him into the van. Into the red, and the bits. “Did you do this?” he screams.

Copley shakes his head, hands gripping Booker’s wrists. “You think I’d betray you like this? After everything you’ve all done? After everything _she’s_ done? Not in a thousand years. I couldn’t.”

Nile steps up to them. Puts a hand on Booker’s arm. “He didn’t do this. We’ll find them though,” she says quietly. “I promise. We’ll find who did this and make them _pay._ ”

He stares at Copley. Shakes him, hard. And releases him all at once, turning to fall into Nile. She pulls him in and he grips her back so hard his knuckles turn white. Presses his face to her shoulder as the sobs escape, wracking his body.

Nicky and Joe watch, hands entwined. There will be time to fall apart. Later. In the privacy of each other. But now? There’s work to be done.

“Let’s check on the pilot,” says Joe. Nicky nods and they go to find out what the _hell_ just happened.

…

Doctor Meta Kozak is a driven woman. A dangerous woman, though she’d hardly describe herself thus. Her work with and for Stephen Merrick has saved countless lives. The work she’ll do after his untimely and tragic death will change even more.

She still has the samples. And a significant payout for the trauma of surviving a terrorist attack. But she wants more. She needs that Nobel Prize. 

There’s no point in trying to recapture one of the immortals. But the one who isn’t anymore? She may prove a valuable piece of the puzzle. And the doctor hardly needs her alive to get the samples she needs.

She uses the payout to hire a crew. Gives them very specific instructions: do not engage. Do not be seen. Kill the woman. Gas the rest. Only take the woman and _do not let them see where you take her._ Cover your tracks on the way back, and bring the body to me. 

…

Andy’s head is screaming at her and everything’s black. Ow. This one was a doozy, huh?

She’s had deaths that blinded her before. Those always suck. Except. There’s something touching her face. That might be why she can’t see anything.

Shit. Body bag. Wouldn’t be the first one she’s been in. The smell’s unmistakeable.

There is one thing an immortal learns. One skill that they rely on above all others. The ability to keep absolutely still as they wake from death. It is a very, very important skill.

She can hear them. Or him. One guard, based on the breathing. The creaking of the armor with the movement of the vehicle.

She wonders how far they’re taking her. And where the others are.

And then it hits her.

Oh.

_Shit._

She _died._

She died _and then she woke up._

A surge of joy fills her and it’s nearly impossible to hold still because she just wants to find them. _Her._ And tell them they don’t have to watch her grow old and die. They don’t have to protect her anymore.

They can goddamn stop with the coddling.

But first she needs out of here.

So. To wait until they unload her, or take out the guard now?

Fuckit. She’s tired of waiting and her family will be worried. Can’t have that. Who’s going to keep those yahoos from falling apart if she’s not there to do it?

She grasps the convenient zipper tab on the inside of the body bag. Drags it slowly down.

“What the-

A face appears above hers and she grabs the edge of the armor and yanks his head down and slams it into hers.

Ow.

_Ow._

Fucking helmet.

Okay plan b.

She sits up, swinging for a throat-punch that leaves the asshole sputtering. Then pulls his combat knife from its holster on his chest and slits his throat.

“Sorry, asshole,” she whispers. “That’s what you get for making ‘murder and kidnapping’ your chosen career choices.”

Andy lays him down in the body bag, even as he bleeds out. It handily contains the blood. Nice. She has some on her, but hey. She has some of hers on her too.

Hands quick and sure, she strips him of his armor, weapons, and uniform. Pulls on everything she can, ignoring the blood. It leaves her a black silhouette that only shows her face beneath the helmet. All she needs is a moment. A few seconds of surprise to get the drop on the rest of them. 

She has that knife, the armor and helmet, an assault rifle, a pistol, and a radio.

That should be plenty.

They don’t leave her waiting long. She can feel the vibrations as the van slows. Turns. Stops. There are voices outside and she holds her weapons at the ready as the doors open.

By the time they realise she’s not their companion, three are dead.

Only one gets a shot off, thudding into her chest armor. That hurts, but a lot less than having your head explode and then heal again.

In under a minute, she’s surrounded by five dead black-clad soldiers-for-hire. And facing one evil doctor.

“You,” Andy snarls.

“But- You’re dead! They showed me the body! You don’t heal anymore! You’re _dead_!”

“Not anymore. Did you take any of the rest?”

Kozak shakes her head, still to stunned to even try to lie.

Andy believes her.

Part of her wants to make it slow. Take her time. Make it hurt. Make her _afraid._ But not while her people search desperately for her. Not while they mourn.

So the good doctor dies with a single bullet to the forehead.

And then stays dead with one to the heart.

Two to the heart.

One to the femoral artery.

One to the throat.

Andy watches her for long minutes, and finds no sign of her getting back up. As it should be.

“And stay down,” she whispers before she walks away.

She dumps the bloodstained clothes and armor in whatever body of water that flanks the industrial district she’s in. Uses the filthy water to tidy herself up a bit. Keeps the weapons.

Hotwires some poor sot’s piece of shit car and heads for…

Shit. Where even is she.

Two hours’ drive from that airstrip, is where. Andy turns the car for the coast and starts driving. She can backtrack them from that airstrip.

…

The pilot’s tied up in the plane, but none the worse for wear for being shaken up.

Fortunately they don’t need him to be ready to fly anymore. He’s in no condition.

Their little vacation is on hold indefinitely while they track down Andy.

They won’t stop until they find her.

A little voice of doubt in the back of Nicky’s head says they once said that about Quyhn.

They are all in shock. All mourning.

Quynh’s near catatonic, staring out the windshield unblinking.

Booker’s hunched in on himself and Nicky’s stroking a hand down his back. He shouldn’t be alone for this. Even moreso? He shouldn’t _feel_ alone. It’s the least Nicky can do for Andy.

He looks at Joe, next to him. Joe looks so, so tired. Exhausted. But he glances at where Nicky’s hand rests on Booker’s shoulder and nods.

They won’t leave Booker to his grief. Alone.

It’s not forgiveness. More acknowledgement of a debt. To her, not him

But Booker’s family. They’re all family.

They’ll get through this together, or not at all.

Nile’s driving, and she’s broken at least twelve traffic laws, muttering away to herself all the while. Face like a thundercloud. Someone will _pay_ for this.

Copley’s in the front seat next to her, clinging to the seat and the door. As shocked as the rest but. Maybe a little concerned for his safety _right now_ , what with how she’s taking the corners.

They pass countless vehicles, paying them no mind. Until a car almost as old as they are streaks past them and whips a shit-hook in the middle of the road.

And starts to follow them.

“We’ve got company,” Nile says grimly.

They all reach for guns. Except Quyhn. Joe slides his sword into her hand, and she nods thanks. Instantly alert and aware and herself.

Now they have something to _do._

Nile pulls off onto a quiet lane, and drives to a patch of trees. Pulls over. Gets out, holding the pistol behind her back.

The car squeals to a stop, kicking up a cloud of dust and the driver is out almost before the car’s stopped.

Nile raises the weapon. “Not one more step,” she warns. She might not have a good view of the person through the dust, but she can read the silhouette enough for a headshot.

“What are you going to do, kill me?”

The voice sends a shudder up Nile’s spine but she holds the gun steady.

And then Andy steps out of the dust.

Dirty and blood-streaked but _alive._ Head intact and grinning and Nile all but flings the pistol to the ground, running to her and hauling her into a hug.

Booker just stares, gun falling from nerveless fingers.

Quynh flings the sword into the van and nearly pushes him over in her rush to reach Andy.

She all but slams into the two women, hugging both tight in an extremely uncharacteristic but _warranted_ reaction.

Nile worms her way out, needing to see Andy’s face again. Reassure herself this is real. Plus. Let the two women have their moment.

Copley stands by the open door of the van, watching silently with tears streaking down his face.

Nicky and Joe watch until Nile dips out of the hug. Then they turn to each other, finally breaking down as they’ve both wanted. _Needed_ to. Sobbing into each other’s necks with their arms clenched around each other.

Quynh cups the back of Andromache’s neck. Breathes her in, deep. And then kisses her. Hard.

It is almost punishing. The edge of teeth and nails digging into Andy’s back.

Andy gives as good as she gets, returning the kiss almost violently for long, long minutes. Clinging like she's afraid Quynh will drift away.

Finally they break apart, gasping. Andy’s hand blindly finds Quynh’s as she turns for the others. Tugs her along in her wake as Andy makes her way to Booker. Grips the back of his neck. 

“You’re back,” he rasps.

“I’m back. _Whole._ I’m here, Book.”

He hugs her nearly as tightly as Nile did.

Quynh lets her fingers slip free, patting Andy’s back before walking to Joe and Nicky, gently pushing them in Andy’s direction.

She meets them halfway and gets enveloped and nearly lost in a shuddering immortal husband sandwich.

And then the laughter starts.

Joe probably starts it. He’s like that. Muttering something under his breath as it bubbles up inside him. A sheer joy at the return of one he loves so dear.

The relief of having her back. Of not being _afraid to lose her_ any longer.

It spreads like wildfire until they’re draped over each other and leaning on the van and perched in the open doors as tears pour down their faces and they laugh until their stomachs hurt.

A long, long time later, they retrieve their guns. Push the car into a ditch, and pile into the van.

Andy’s driving again, with Quynh by her side.

They have a vacation to get to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> But I made it better? Comments? Only the epilogue after this. We're almost done.


	8. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a couple moments before we leave the immortals to it.

A few days after they arrive, Joe goes to sit next to Booker out on the deck.

Booker has to consciously stop himself from moving away.

“This isn’t forgiveness,” says Joe.

The first words he’s spoken to Booker, aside from the tirade the day of their sparring match, since the betrayal.

“I don’t know when I’ll forgive you for what you did. To Andy. To Nicky. To all of us.”

Booker nods.

“You have a lot to atone for.”

He doesn’t nod, figuring the first one covers this too.

Joe sighs. Leans back, stretching his legs out in front of him. Playing at the zippers of the pants he bought to replace Quynhs pilfered loot. “But I’m willing to work together. To attempt to be civil. You’re one of us. You always will be. But that’s all I have, for now. I might forgive you someday. But it won’t be today. And probably not soon. But until then. I’m willing to try to figure out how.”

Booker knows this isn’t something he’s earned.

But he’ll take it.

“Thank you,” he says.

It’s a start.

Joe nods, rising from the chair and walking over to Nicky, who smiles as he puts his arm around Joe. Kisses his temple. And they walk down the stairs as one.

Booker watches them go, and the bitterness that’s crept in over the years. The jealousy at what they have and he doesn’t.

It eases like a coil in his chest. Unknots and starts to slide away.

He leans back in his chair, and smiles.

…

At the cabin, Andy and Quynh sleep together. They share a bed at night. (Sometimes loudly. Nile says she’s scarred for life.) They are rarely apart during the day.

No longer mortal, she can take the risk. The hits, when Quynh wakes fighting for her life. For her freedom.

Andy gives as good as she gets, and Quynh wouldn’t have it any other way.

Nicky and Joe sleep together as well, on the opposite end of the house.

Some days Nile sleeps in a tent just to get some peace and quiet. Booker’s not allowed. He can get his own damn tent.

As promised, Andy gets Quynh a beautiful new wooden bow. She shoots for long hours during the day, surrounded by trees and wind and sunlight.

And no water.

They are not the other two. They are not wrapped up in each other, so much as with. Next to. Beside. Each other. At all times. Partners. Covering each other’s flank. Ready to face any threat or foe, side by side. 

Each with the oldest and fiercest warrior in existence at her back.

Immortals, reunited. Never to part again.

Family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who read all the way to this point. This was a labor of love to a few characters I thought deserved a happier story than they got. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!


End file.
